Class Obsession

by Editor
June 4, 2015 at 9:28 am

http://www.smartertimes.com/1393/class-obsession

A dispatch from Boston about developments in the case of an Islamist shot dead by an FBI agent and a Boston police officer puts the New York Times' obsession with class categories on full and unattractive display. From the story:

An F.B.I. agent and a police officer approached Mr. Rahim around 7 a.m. on Tuesday outside a CVS Pharmacy in Roslindale, a middle-class Boston neighborhood....

Mr. Wright was taken into custody in Everett, a working-class Boston suburb, on Tuesday after the shooting...

In Mr. Wright's working-class neighborhood in Everett, a suburb just north of Boston, neighbors said they saw police officers and F.B.I. agents around 7 a.m. Tuesday at City Hall, around the corner from Mr. Wright's second-floor apartment on Linden Street.

There's no indication or evidence that these alleged jihadist plotters were driven by class animus. So why is it necessary for the Times to dwell on how classy the neighborhoods are or are not? If anything, it's a sign of sloppy editing that the description of Everett as "working-class" was left in twice. I'm not even sure what it means. Most neighborhoods other than some retirement communities in Florida or Arizona have people who work. It's as if the newspaper is edited by a bunch of Marxists waging class warfare through the editing process. To a reader who doesn't share the obsession with class, it's distracting and frustrating.

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